Carriage of Staphylococcus aureus in free-living wild animals in Spain
Investigation published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology
August 15th, 2014
The presence of methicillin susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) have been analysed in different free-living wild animals to assess the genetic diversity and predominant genotypes on each animal species. Samples were taken from the skin and/or nares and isolates were characterized by spa typing, MLST and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The proportion of MSSA carriers was 5.00%, 22.93%, 19.78% and 17.67% in Eurasian griffon vulture, Iberian ibex, red deer and wild boar, respectively (P = 0.057). A higher proportion of isolates (P = 0.000) were recovered from nasal samples (78.51%) than skin samples (21.49%), but the 9.26% of red deer and 18.25% of wild boar would have been undetected if only nasal samples had been tested. Sixty-three different spa types were identified, including 25 new spa types. The most frequent were t528 (43.59%) in Iberian ibex, t548 and t11212 (15.79% and 14.04%) in red deer and t3750 (36.11%) in wild boar. By MLST, 27 STs were detected of which 12 had not been described previously. The most frequent were ST581 for Iberian ibex (48.72%), ST425 for red deer (29.82%) and ST2328 for wild boar (42.36%). Isolates from Eurasian griffon vulture belong to ST133. Host specificity has been observed for the most frequent spa types and STs (P = 0.000). The highest resistance percentage was found against benzylpenicillin (average 22.2%) although most of the S. aureus isolates were susceptible to all antimicrobial tested. Basically, MSSA isolates were different from those MRSA isolates previously detected in the same animal species
Porrero MC., Mentaberre G., Sanchez S., Fernandez-Llario P., Casas-Diaz E., Mateos A., Vidal D., Lavin S., Fernandez-Garayzabal JF. and Dominguez L..
 | Servicio de Zoonosis de Transmisión Alimentaria y Resistencia a Antimicrobianos (ZTA). Centro de Vigilancia Sanitaria Veterinaria (VISAVET). Universidad Complutense (UCM). |
| Departamento de Sanidad Animal. Facultad de Veterinaria. Universidad Complutense (UCM). |
 | Servicio de Ecopatología de Fauna Salvaje (SEFaS). Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). |
 | Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (IREC). Universidad de Castilla La Mancha (UCLM). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha (JCCM). |
 | Universidad de Extremadura (UNEX). |
